How force a document open as Read Only

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David Neesen - 02 Dec 2007 01:08 GMT

Hi,

I have Word 2003 and we are using a document management system (DM5) and I
am trying to figure out if there is a way using DDE commands to force Word to
open a document as Read Only. At first I was going to try and use command
line switches to do this but I now realize that there is no such switch.

We currently use the following DDE to open a document in Word:
[DDE.DDEOpen(%"1"%)]

This works well but I would like to force the document to be read only.

Any help would be appreciated (or even point me to a good DDE reference page).

Thanks

David Neesen

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Helmut Weber - 02 Dec 2007 09:15 GMT

Hi David,

I don't know much about DDE and nothing
about your docmanagement system.

If other methods fail or are not available,
then I'd make the file read-only before opening it
from the commandline, like

attrib +r test-03.doc

--

Greetings from Bavaria, Germany

Helmut Weber, MVP WordVBA

Vista Small Business, Office XP

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David Neesen - 02 Dec 2007 22:59 GMT

Thanks but that might not be feasible with what we are trying to accomplish.
Specifically, we have approximately 400,000 WordPerfect documents and we have
finally finished migrating to Word (we are a law firm for those wondering why
we were still on WP). I have set Word up in the document management system
to open the WordPerfect documents but, because some documents might not
convert correctly, I want to force this to be read only (leaving us at least
2 other methods of converting the document should the native Word conversion
fail).

In other words, the only time I want the document read only is if it is a
WordPerfect Document being opened by Word. This logic is simple to achieve
using the doc management tools...the only piece that is still missing is the
DDE settings to make it Read Only.

Thanks again.

David.

> Hi David,
>
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
>
> Vista Small Business, Office XP

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Julian - 03 Dec 2007 15:41 GMT

Hi David,

I'm big on hazy suggestions today, but If I recall correctly, a better
method might be to use Tasks and the SendWindowMessage method - but as the
help files says you need various wParam and IParam values that you can find
only with the Spy Utility of the Microsoft Platform Software Development
Kit.

Hope that is of non-zero value...

Julian

> Thanks but that might not be feasible with what we are trying to
> accomplish.
[quoted text clipped - 40 lines]
>>
>> Vista Small Business, Office XP

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Helmut Weber - 03 Dec 2007 17:07 GMT

Hi David,

would making all WordPerfect docs read-only be an option?
If so:

sourcedir> attrib +r *.wpd /s

--

Greetings from Bavaria, Germany

Helmut Weber, MVP WordVBA

Vista Small Business, Office XP

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